When Caesar Came to Egypt

Recently I read a book (supposedly) on Cleopatra by Jacob Abbott. I say “supposedly” because the book is about far more things than just that one queen. In an earlier series of blogs on ancient Rome, I had written of Julius Caesar’s rise to power and his clash with the general Pompey during that struggle.

Pompey fled to Egypt with Caesar in hot pursuit. This put the ruler of Alexandria in a fix. Here is how the book describes it:
“If they were to receive Pompey, they reasoned, Caesar would be made their enemy; if they refused to receive him, Pompey himself would be offended, and they did not know which of the two it would be safe to displease.”
Their solution was well thought out… and horrifying: they beheaded Pompey when he landed. The book describes their reasoning:
“’But by killing Pompey,” they said, “we will be sure to please Caesar and Pompey himself will lie still.”

But if they thought presenting Pompey’s head on a platter would please Caesar, they were in for a surprise. Caesar was “shocked and displeased”, and ordered the head to be buried with the “most solemn and imposing funeral ceremonies”! Honouring the dead, even their enemies, was apparently a standard practice in ancient Rome… (the book describes multiple instances of this practice).

But the king of Alexandria hadn’t bargained for how Caesar would act, now that he had won the war with Pompey. Even though he had a very small force with him (only the small number who had chased Pompey across the sea), and the Alexandrian force was far larger, Caesar “established himself in the palaces of Alexandria as if he were the king himself”!

When the previous king of Alexandria had died, a succession struggle was imminent between his son and daughter (Cleopatra). To preempt a war, the son appealed to Rome to settle the dispute. And sent them gifts and money, effectively bribing Rome to rule in his favour. Caesar now pulled that issue up and said he was the representative of Rome, and that the son and Cleopatra should present their case to him!

The attempt to win Caesar’s favour by killing his enemy, the backfiring of that attempt, and the sheer audacity of Caesar in behaving like he owned the place…. it could almost be an episode (or two) of Game of Thrones!

Oh c’mon, the latest season is in progress, so it’s hard not to see the parallels...

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarAugust 15, 2017 at 9:56 AM

    This book had many details to present, much of which are generally unknown. Why would' Caesar not behave like he owned the place? Actually he believed he owned the entire world known to the Europeans then, for whom the world could only be what bounds they knew! :-) Rome was on top of the "world" then in any case.

    The book did present many wretched aspects and political muck of those times too, in particular those times earlier to Cleopatra and Caesar's. I actually felt depressed when I finished the book. We seem to live in a better world. I am inclined to believe that, thanks to whatever little history we know and despite the fact that truth is difficult to come out in history books but only perspectives coming out of paradigms.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Student of the Year

Image
As a toddler, my daughter loved Alia Bhatt’s songs, esp. the ones from Student of the Year . (That movie did have many good songs and well-choreographed dances). Fast forward to present day, when she is 12 yo. She rarely watches Hindi movies now, but one of the few ones she likes of late, Raja aur Rani ki Prem Kahani has, yes, Alia Bhatt.   If I had any hopes that there was anything to be read in the name of her toddler-time favorite ( Student of the Year ), they have been dashed. Our conversations come exam time are perfectly captured by this photo and its caption: In fact, the pic below captures how she and I look at her answer sheets – me intently, she with an expression of “It’s over, so why are you even looking at it?”   Of late, we pull her leg and tell her that she isn’t showing any signs of academic prowess, she’d better find a rich guy to marry. Some time later, she showed us this meme on the Internet: “Me No Study, Me No Care Me Go Marry Millionaire If He Die
Read more

Animal Senses #7: Touch and Remote Touch

Instinctively, we think touch is based on contact. Not entirely true, explains Ed Yong in Immense World – there’s a more important aspect than contact: “These incredible feats are possible through movement. If you rest a fingertip upon a surface, you can get only a limited idea of its features. But as soon you’re allowed to move, everything changes. Hardness becomes apparent with a press. Textures resolve at a stroke.” As you run your fingers over a surface, they hit the tiny peaks and troughs and set off vibrations in the mechanoreceptors at their tips.   At the tip of its snout, the star-nosed mole has many pairs of hairless appendages. It uses them to touch things around itself. Alive or dead? Food or ignore? It does these movements at an insane speed. In the time it takes to blink our eyes, the star-nosed mole can probe, identify and swallow its food. “Light may be the fastest thing in the universe, but light sensors have their limits, and the star-nosed mole’s sense of
Read more

The Retort of the "Luxury Person"

Image
Coming up with biting and witty retorts. It’s something we dream of, but rarely manage to pull off. Worse, the more we stew over the offending remark, the more likely we are to come up with that dream retort, as Calvin ruefully points out: During our last holiday at the Taj Resort, seeing my wife carrying towels to our poolside chairs, one of the kids there mistook her for a member of the staff and asked for a towel. When my wife narrated this to us, I did not imagine that my 8 yo daughter would come up with her own retort. But a day later, my daughter recapped the incident, an incident that didn’t even involve her in the first place , and said, “You know what I’d have told that kid who asked for the towel?”. And without waiting for an answer, she told us anyway: “I don’t work here. I too am a luxury person who is living at this resort. Go get your own towel.” We were highly amused by the phrase she had coined: “luxury person”. It certainly captures the kind of holid
Read more